House of Bodies

2014

Action / Crime / Thriller

Synopsis

While indulging his appetite for the grim and gruesome by patronizing a voyeuristic Web site that's based in a house where a serial killer once lived, a hearing-impaired boy begins to suspect that the site's violence is more than just make-believe.

While indulging his appetite for the grim and gruesome by patronizing a voyeuristic Web site that's based in a house where a serial killer once lived, a hearing-impaired boy begins to suspect that the site's violence is more than just make-believe.

Movie Reviews

A way below average thriller with few redeeming qualities

Terrence Howard and Peter Fonda's scenes in the movie is basically one
very long interrogation scene split up to parts.

A fairly pointless one may I add as well, where Terrence Howard plays a
cop who's interrogating a serial killer played by Peter Fonda about a
copycat of his.

It's obvious that all their scenes where shot on the same day in the
same location, and that they both did it for the money, and that the
producers needed some stars in the movie to attract viewers, and that's
the sole reason why they are in the movie.

They aren't bad per se, but if they weren't famous their scenes would
have been cut down to a couple minutes, or cut out entirely, hell
they'd probably wouldn't have been filmed in the first place to be
honest.

The rest of the movie is about the 'House Of Bodies' which is not a
haunted place even if that's what it sounds like but a website with
'web-cam-girls' in a apartment complex re-enact murders.

It's really slow, and riddled with plot-holes, and the only reason I
didn't absolutely hate it was because one of the web-cam-girls forms a
friendship with one of her clients who happen to be a mute.

But yeah the rest of the movie is a tiring peace of work, with overall
annoying characters and pointless scenes of people clicking on websites
etc etc.

Queen Latifah steps by in a web-chat as a counselor or something to the
mute young man, but that's about it.

Henry Lee Bishop is on death row for a series of grisly murders. Years
later, he's still in jail, solitary mostly, and similar murders happen.
Detective Starks investigates, including going to the prison to talk to
Bishop eyeball to eyeball.

A bunch of young idiots run a
simulated-sex-and-murder-reenacted-over-Internet sort of business. They
strive for realism. They fake each other out. It seems the director
intends that we don't know what is real or not with this group.

A deaf, speechless young man plays video games and visits gory
websites. One of these is 'House of Bodies' which supposedly was
inspired by Henry Lee Bishop's place of residence. This is the website
of the idiots mentioned above. In each room the young women re-enact
murders committed there. Our young man reads all this on the site.
That's the site's marketing ploy.

That's what the detectives are not seeing: the website seems to have
generated at least one copycat killer.

Tracey runs the house and the site. Kelli is the new recruit who is a
bit gun shy. Tisha is more accustomed to the work. Sadey left the job
before she was murdered.

The deaf boy logs into the site, and Tracey assigns him to Kelli to
talk to. They get to know each other a bit. Sadly, the killer comes in,
then starts taking out the staff.

So, who gets out of this alive?

-----Scores-------

Cinematography: 9/10 Usually excellent.

Sound: 8/10 Usually quite good, but Terrence Howard was badly miked. AM
radio in the desert sounds better. The incidental music was good for
creepiness.

Acting: 8/10 Worth seeing for the interactions between Terrence Howard
and Peter Fonda.

Screenplay: 8/10 Much better than I expected. Plot progresses well, and
the detective solves a mystery.

Reviewed by d b5 / 10

Interesting idea, terrible execution.

Despite having some pretty good ideas behind it, this movie was terrible.

Good:

- The setting was interesting. A bunch of cam-girls who live in the house of a serial killer and people can pay to (watch them) act out serial killer-y fantasies. That's pretty unique and adequately creepy. You get to see some gore-y shots of dead girls and related. It had all the elements of a good horror movie...they just were totally misused.

- A few good actors. Terrance Howard and the serial killer dude had good chemistry. The deaf guy and the main girl were fine. Queen Latifah's cameo was well done. She should've played a bigger role though, would've been funny to see her as a main character in a slasher.

- It was shot well enough. Sets were good.

Bad:

- Everything else. The storyline was written in such a disjointed way that it made no sense. It jumped around and was needlessly difficult to follow. You have the main storyline of a guy in the house murdering women which was super generic but decent. Then you have this other storyline with Terrance Howard which had almost NOTHING to do with the main storyline and was used in a way that rendered it completely pointless (way to waste your best actors). From the preview I expected this to be more like Silence of the Lambs, but it wasn't at all. The concept of a dude watching these girls die via webcam was OK, but not executed in an interesting or substantive way. It wouldn't have changed much if that part wasn't even in the movie (sadly, the same goes for Howard). And just when things start getting interesting, the movie prematurely ends with no resolution whatsoever. It felt like the director didn't quite know what type of movie they wanted to make and used elements of several (silence of the lambs, feardotcom, untraceable, etc), but was unable to connect and interweave them.

- Maybe it was just the version I saw, but the sound was abysmal. The music was WAY too loud and all of Howard / killer's dialog was nearly incomprehensible.

- There are also some stupid plot holes like how the kid magically "hacked" and got the power to turn back on in the house / website.